Tall, Dark, and Dead – 93 – Meat Market

Favorite quote: “I think these things – these people with this disease – they’re doing a good thing! They’re cleaning the trash off the streets!”

Thoughts: Ooh boy.

This low-budget movie features two ex-security guard vigilantes, a trio of vinyl-clad vampiresses with laser guns, a luchadore in a wifebeater named El Diablo Azul who appears to have been dubbed over, and nanobot-genesis zombies who function as part of a wireless hive-like neuronetwork.

Well, there were some good moments – mostly involving the actual filming. Zombies are always incredibly effective in silhouette, and there were some fantastic shots of such; similarly, the “week two” destruction sequence was actually very well done, with the camera panning through (or perhaps alongside) a building in order to reveal the battle taking place in each “cell.” It reminded me of an animated waxworks.

When one of the vampires explains that they’re interested in taking on the zombies due to the fact that the zombies are destroying their food supply, I found her reasoning quite clever.

Also, this may be the first example of nanite/nanobot/computer-controlled zombies I’ve seen (and just the other day, I was arguing that I could probably spin the victims of the Mad Hatter from Batman into zombies). I wouldn’t count Fido, as in that movie technology is used to enslave, not create, zombies.

Apparently these medical ‘bots were intended to enter a body and eat diseased tissue, but in testing ended up eating everything, replicating, and establishing a collective consciousness. Thus, they are still transmissible via bodily fluids. The doctor who created this zombie “gray goo” is seen toiling away on a cure, which indicates to me that the zombies are not technically dead. He also makes mention of winter killing them off.